5 minute read
Q&A
from Vol. 14 Issue 3
BACKDROP’S Q&A BEGINNINGS
Fifteen years after its start, Backdrop’s creator and first editor-in-chief sits down to talk about some origins of her own.
BY ELEANOR BISHOP | ILLUSTRATION BY MACEY ELDER
Ashley Luther Micklish, Backdrop’s first editor-inchief, had no idea that what started as a class project would grow into Ohio University’s first and now oldest student-run magazine. Since graduating from OU in 2008, Micklish has ventured into successful careers in brand strategy and marketing, working for companies like Toms, Nike and currently, the coupon aggregator Honey.
How did Backdrop come to be?
I was a magazine journalism major within Scripps and my junior year, which would have been '06-'07, we [took] that one class … it was basically a capstone magazine class, and [former editor-in-chief of Writer’s Digest and Boston Magazine, John Joseph “Jack”] Brady was our professor. He was a mentor, and I was really inspired by him and his experience. Part of our end–of–the year project was creating a concept for a publication, creating a business plan, coming up with the editorial calendar, coming up with the sections, all that stuff, but all just for presentation. We came up with Backdrop as an idea then in that class. A couple of us got beers after the class and we were all like, “Well, why don’t we just do this on our own?” [So] we thought, “OK, let’s bust this out into the world for real. And if it fails who cares, we’re just trying.” Never did we really expect it to still be going on for so long.
What was the student publication landscape like at the time? Were there other magazines at OU?
There was The Post, and there was the Athens News …. and that was it for newspapers … there was a nascent online magazine, and Southeast Ohio Magazine, but that was it. That’s why we were like, “OK, there’s a huge need.” And also, I think Jack Brady really inspired us to think more about the culture and the lifestyle around college life. We were very inspired by New York Magazine, Time Out, even The Village Voice. A lot of those magazines that were hyper-local, and [we wanted to] focus on neighborhoods or common Athens colloquialisms, or common things that were around in the ether of Athens and OU. We wanted to make it a balance of harder hitting features that took longer to develop and were more magazine essay style and … easier to read, more bite size content that was fun and easily digestible. We realized that mix of content was missing as well in the town.
How did you go about putting together a student-run magazine without having a model for what that looked like? One thing we thought of was, “We have no money, how are we going to print this?” We knew for a fact that we wanted to give it out for free, because college students aren’t going to pay for anything, so that was actually a huge pillar of … the non-negotiables for Backdrop. We knew we wanted it to be student-run, we knew we didn’t want to take any money from the college because we didn’t want any censorship, we knew we wanted it to be self-funded, and that’s where we were like, how are we going to fund this?… We really just went around to local businesses, asking them to support us, we said, “Hey, we’re trying this new thing, it’s going to come out four times a year, could you please just give us 500 bucks to put your bagel shop in this magazine?” And a lot of people just threw us a bone, to be nice, I think. There was a lot of grassroots, door-to-door sales kind of work … I’ll never forget going up to [the printer] to proof the first issue and just seeing the reams of paper come through. It was just a really gratifying feeling.
How did you establish Backdrop’s tone?
We looked at the type of content that was already out there with The Post and The Athens News and everything else, and we thought, there’s room to be a little more irreverent, be a little more risqué, not that I’d say Backdrop’s really risqué, but we weren’t trying to take ourselves so seriously. We wanted to create, I guess you’d call it ‘water cooler talk’ among the campus … We had that stupid column, “Hot for Teacher” profiling hot professors, that feels so tone deaf these days, but back then, we tried to tap into things that were naturally reverberating around campus and bring that to light ... we wanted people to pick up the magazine, read it, and then pass it along to a friend. That was also sort of a central goal.
How do you view Backdrop now?
I look back on it as one of the most fun jobs I’ve ever had, if I had to call it a job. I miss it, I wish I could get my hands in that type of work again, mainly just because of the collaborative nature of Backdrop … It did give me a ton of sills that I use today, [like] not just thinking about the consumer, audiencereader view [of journalism], but also the business side. They don’t necessarily teach you that, you think about editorial integrity, you think about writing and ethics and story, but you also have to think about the nuts and bolts of running a business, which is advertising, distribution, production, operation, so that experience was invaluable. We definitely made mistakes and learned a ton and learned how to optimize and fix [them] for next time. So that was invaluable.
Do you have any advice for current journalism students?
Don’t be afraid to take risks and stick your neck out there. I think a lot of us feel like we’re asking stupid questions or feel like we’re intimated to do things, and I think a little vulnerability goes a long way. I think sticking your neck out and you know, asking the bagel shop to advertise for $500, or asking the printer for a loan – I think we ended up negotiating really flexible payment terms –just asking those things actually helped us to get our project over the line. If you have a vision and if you have a goal, surround yourself with smart people who also believe in that vision and goal and … I think things will manifest for you in that way. That’s really what Backdrop taught me. b
